


One More Secret

by kelex



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Gen, Headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-24 02:37:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4902295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kelex/pseuds/kelex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you're making deals to save a soul, what's one more secret between not-quite-friends?</p>
            </blockquote>





	One More Secret

**Author's Note:**

> Gen (mostly. Tilt your head and there's Hannigram.) Written because VictoriaAGrey and I have similar headcanons regarding the Verger brand on Hannibal's back.

In a half-dark room, two women were sipping red wine from a pair of rather expensive crystal goblets. Side by side they sat, as if waiting for something or someone to come in and scare them to death. The boogeyman would have picked the wrong house if this were so; these two women have been through far too much to be frightened of anything.

"A personal, anonymous donor, from a private corporation, earmarked specifically towards the care and feeding of Hannibal Lecter?" 

"Yes, I think that would be the best way to handle it." In the dark, both women smiled, and they didn't need to see each other's faces to know it. "Once the donation's received, there's going to be some whining, especially from Frederick. But I think I can handle that." 

"Paid to the Baltimore hospital or the medical one?" 

"Medical one, I think. The procedure won't be cheap, even though we'll be getting it at a discount because it'll be done for a ward of the state. Once the bill is received, the donation can be paid directly to the hospital and not our institution. Frederick can't scoop any off the top, and it won't be traced back to you or us."

"And what does Will Graham say to any of this?"

"He hasn't yet. But give him time. He won't take long; he's obsessed with Hannibal Lecter." 

"You can't fold too easily."

Another smile in the dark, and this time, she ran her hand up the other woman's leg. "Have you met me?"

\-----

For the record, it took Will Graham exactly four days to call and arrange a meeting. Dinner, actually, because Alana negotiated hard, angling for exactly that. _No need to go all out, Will. Let's just have dinner, you and me, old friends._

_Sure, okay. How about this weekend, Saturday? Seven?_

_I'll be there, Will. It'll be good to see you._

For some reason, Will highly doubted that. But he spent most of Friday in the lake, catching a stringer of trout, and most of Saturday morning resting up. Apparently he wasn't as strong as he thought he was. 

The one thing he'd salvaged ( ~~stolen~~ ) from Hannibal's house was his box of recipe cards. Written in Hannibal's distinctive handwriting, it comforted him more than he wanted to admit knowing they were in his hands and not in the hands of the FBI. It was almost like having a bit of Hannibal with him.

For something this important, Will was willing to dress up. His best sportsjacket, a clean salmon-colored button down, khakis. And he was cooking. Hannibal had left several pre-made meals in Will's refrigerator, but he wasn't willing to share them with anyone else. So he was trying to cook, spending Saturday afternoon attempting to follow one of Hannibal's recipes for fish. The table was set for two, and the dogs had been temporarily relocated to the backyard.

He found it easier to concentrate when he imitated Hannibal's calm and cool exterior, and it didn't take him long to get in the right mindset. By the time he heard Alana's car pulling up, he was ready for anything. Including blackmail, if it came to that.

He was pouring the wine when Alana came in. "The door was open; I hope you don't mind."

"Not at all; I left it open for you. Glad you could make it." Will offered her the full wineglass.

She declined. "No, thank you, I'm driving back tonight."

"And how is Margot doing after the loss of her dear brother Mason? I wanted to send condolences but since the bastard tried to kill me and cut off my face, I thought a sympathy card would be insincere. Unfortunately, Hallmark doesn't have a 'glad your brother is dead' line." Will drank from the wineglass in his hand.

"How gauche of them," Alana replied dryly. "Margot is doing as well as can be expected right now. I'll tell her you asked about her." To her surprise, Will pulled out her chair. "Thank you. Why am I really here, Will? I doubt you're looking for my relationship status; you can find that on Facebook."

Will waited for Alana to be seated, then brought in two platters of trout, grilled vegetables on skewers, and two chilled bowls of green salad. "Dessert is only a lemon cake," he apologized. "And you're here because we need to talk about Hannibal Lecter."

Alana had picked up her fork, but put it back down when Will mentioned Hannibal's name. "I should have known. What do you want to discuss?"

"How's his back healing?" Will was making a colossal effort to stay calm, but the thought of Verger's pig brand on Hannibal's back made his hands tremble with rage.

"Fine, at the moment. The burn treatment is working and his pain is being controlled," she answered, careful to keep her tone neutral. Will's reaction did not go unnoticed; in the more common vernacular, he was losing his chill.

"That's it?" Will was getting more and more agitated. "After what he did for you, what he _gave_ you, that's all you have to say about it!" His silverware clinked to the plate, and he glared. "You owe him, Alana."

"And what, exactly, do I owe Hannibal Lecter." It wasn't really a question, because she did owe him, twice over.

"Well, first of all, you owe him your life. Mason wasn't exactly going to let anyone skate out of Muskrat Farm alive and we both know it. The only thing that _might_ have saved you was Margot, but even then you know how Mason didn't like sharing his toys." Will swirled the wine around in his wineglass. "Second, there's a particular little package sitting in an IVF clinic that you owe him for, so I'd say you owe him your future, too."

Alana was just a little bit chilled; she was reminded quite strongly of Hannibal's threats to her life. _Don't be brave, Alana. Be blind._ And Will's reference to the clinic made her wonder what else Hannibal had shared with Will. "So what do you want me to do, say thank you?"

"Get the brand removed. Give him his dignity back. Let him be a man, not one of Mason's pigs. It was meant to humiliate him, and we owe him. I owe him my life. And this is the least I can do." Will was working very hard to stay calm and cool, but he was not achieving it. 

Alana was not at all comfortable with the passion in Will's voice. He was obviously still obsessed with Hannibal Lecter, and there was no way that could end well, and they both knew it. Still, he had some good points, much as she hated to admit it. "You're asking me to authorize skin grafts for Hannibal, is that it?"

"Yes!" Will's fist banged the table. "Alana, please. He's already a prisoner, an exhibit people are going to be watching through the bars like he's in a zoo exhibition. If not for him, do it for me. I have to repay him for my life, I can't let him own me like that." As soon as his fist hit the table, he regretted it. He forced his hand to relax, and inclined his head in apology. "I'm sorry; I'm still feeling a little... touchy." The smile on his face felt like a corpse's rictus grin.

Now that was a sentiment Alana could relate to, not wanting to owe anybody for anything. "All right, I'll consider it. But you have to do something for me." The thump of Will's fist had made her jumpy, ready to storm out until he apologized. She didn't believe it, but he was trying.

"Anything."

"Let this be goodbye. Get yourself out of town, away from Jack and Hannibal. Go away and do not look back. Make yourself a new life somewhere. Take the dogs and just… go." She leaned across the table, ignoring the entrée on her plate. "I begged Jack not to take you out of the classroom, but I didn't stop him. Let me fix that mistake now, before it's too late." 

"You mean while there's still some of me left to salvage," Will cut in. He was thoroughly uninterested in her martyrdom or her dramatics, but she had touched on an uncomfortable thought, one that he didn't want to have. His only hope of salvaging himself, while he still had a self to save, was to get away from everybody. From Baltimore, from temptation, from Jack and the FBI. 

From Hannibal Lecter and the things Hannibal made him feel.

"Okay, yes, that's exactly what I mean." Alana sat back then, seeing that the emotional route wasn't working with Will this time. Or maybe she wasn't picking the right one. Their friendship was close to non-existent thanks to Hannibal Lecter, but she felt like they were trying to work it out. "A new town, a new place would be good for you. Put all of this behind you. Start over with a life nobody has manipulated. Leave Hannibal in my care; there's enough clinical interest in him to give him a decent life. He won't have freedom, but he'll get access to books, his drawings, everything reasonable to make him comfortable. And you know that I'll look after him, Will. He's threatened to kill me; I don't take that lightly. I'm going to make sure that Hannibal stays put."

He didn't know if he could trust Alana or not, but she was giving him an out. A way to not only pay his debt to Hannibal but to have a new beginning for himself. "All right. Here's the deal. You tell Hannibal he's getting the surgery. I want to see when it's done. By the time he wakes up, I'll be gone."

"No goodbye, and no last words. He's a manipulator."

"You don't have to remind me." But he did agree to her conditions, because he knew Hannibal would take any chance he could to warp his mind that last bit more. "I'll leave a letter with you for him, and you give it to him when I'm gone."

That was fair, even though she knew that the letter would never be delivered. "Fair enough." A pause. "This mean we got a deal?"

One more thing. "I won't tell you where I'm at until I'm settled. Might be six weeks, might be a year." 

"Just so long as you keep me on your Christmas card list," Alana agreed, and privately, she thought it was a good idea. She wished she'd thought of it. "I'll take care of Jack, too." Because she was pretty sure Jack wasn't going to be happy with Will disappearing off the face of the Earth. 

"Then yes, we've got a deal." He wasn't likely to forget Muskrat Farm's address any time soon. "I'll send you a postcard." 

"You want me to take anybody? Applesauce could use a friend, and Muskrat's big enough," she offered.

"No, I got it." Will wasn't going to leave a single dog behind. "I'll probably sell the place here, if anybody wants it." Another murder house; Randall Tier had died here, though no one in the public knew it. 

Alana would ask Margot to buy it. If Will ever needed to come back home, at least he'd have a home waiting for him. But that was for a later discussion. "If you need anything, Will, don't hesitate to ask. You know that all I want to do is help."

He had a sarcastic reply on the tip of his tongue, but Hannibal's adopted mindset helped him swallow it back. "Yeah, I know." The hostility he wanted to radiate was locked under a thin veneer of civility, but he didn't know how much longer he could hold onto it. "And I appreciate it."

"Not that dinner doesn't look delicious, but I think I better get going before I overstay my welcome," Alana suggested kindly. Because she had the feeling that Will was going to implode if he had to sit through an entire dinner with her. She regretted that, on some level.

"Why don't you take it back to Margot? It's not a five-star chef's meal or anything, but I think I did okay." Revealing it as one of Hannibal's recipes would probably not go over well. "I caught more than I needed in case I messed up and had to start over, so I'm not going to starve."

Declining would cause more of a scene than she wanted, and so Alana capitulated gracefully. She and Will managed some degree of comfortable small talk while they were packing up the food, and it began to dawn on Alana that the meal, while still relatively basic, was far beyond Will's usual capacity. 

The food was going into the garbage. Anything that reminded her of Hannibal Lecter's meals went right into the trash. 

When Will opened the fridge to bring out the cake, Alana's decision was cemented as she saw Hannibal's handwriting on the tape that labeled several of Will's dishes. She didn't mention it when Will didn't, and promised herself not to eat a bite of the food. The cake looked safe; it was Pepperidge Farm, and Will just sent the whole thing with her, box and all. "I'll bring the dishes back clean," she promised.

"I'll look forward to it." On the back porch, he found a box that had once carried fresh peaches, and loaded the dishes into the box for Alana. "Want me to carry it for you?"

"Nah, I can manage, thank you." Alana took the box, thankful it wasn't heavy. She raised her shoulder in a goodbye wave, and laid the box on the floorboard of the back seat. Then leaning against the car, her breath crystalized in the cold air. "Will…"

"Yeah?" He was standing on the porch, hands tucked into his jacket pockets, and Alana was struck by how much he'd changed. His glasses were cleaner, straighter. His hair had been trimmed and brushed, his stubble mostly shaved. But more than that, he had physically changed. There was a straightness to his carriage that she wasn't used to; it was as if every scar he bore made him stronger. Every time she looked, she saw less and less of Will Graham, and more and more of Hannibal Lecter.

"Be careful. Please, go. Get out of here before we destroy you." She got into her car quickly after that, slamming it shut and spinning gravel out of the driveway.

\-----

Will waited for Alana to leave, watching her car tear out of the driveway. Then he walked through the house, letting the dogs out. They tore around the house, barking and leaping and smelling all of the new smells. Winston urinated on the car's tire tracks, then joined Will on the porch, watching the others. "That was… easy."

Winston whined softly, as if he couldn't figure out why he was being addressed. 

"I think you made an impression on our dear Miss Bloom." A figure haunted the shadows, but emerged slowly into the halo of the porch light as he spoke. "I don't think she's going to be eating your dinner."

"Yeah, I don't think she trusts me." He bent to scratch behind Winston's ears as Hannibal came to stand at his shoulder. "But I got what I wanted out of her."

"But at what cost, though?" 

Will let the dogs run wild for a few more moments as he didn't answer the question. Winston nudged him again, whimpering softly for more scratches. He buried his face in the dog's warm fur, and was finally able to come up with an answer. "The only one I can pay." 

"Now that I have given up my freedom, you are going to leave? Just like that." 

"Not just like that." Will whistled, and the rest of the dogs came stampeding back to the house, and they all tried to topple in at once. "How much people meat did you actually feed my dogs, Hannibal?" There was no answer to that because Will didn't know the answer. He didn't want to ask. "I have to go."

"For my sake, yes. Then you are a martyr." Hannibal followed Will back into the house and sat across from him in front of the fireplace. Will poured himself a glass of bourbon, and Hannibal declined. "I should be grateful."

The fire's glow turned the bourbon a deep amber. "For my sake. I don't know who I am any more. You and me, the Will Graham that is yours, I don't know how to be that guy when you're not here. And I don't know if there's enough of the pre-Hannibal me left to be any good. But I have to find out. I have to try and recover who I am."

"And so we find out if we can survive separation," Hannibal commented, moving his feet so that Buster and Winston could curl together in front of the fire.

"I can't. If I'm here, I can't. If I know that you're here, available to me, I can't. If I'm going to survive, it has to be far away from here. From you." 

"You will always know where I am," Hannibal reminded. "You will always know what I did for you."

"Yes." He downed the bourbon in a single hard gulp, and it burned painfully. But it didn't stop him from pouring another.

"You can't run from what you know, Will," Hannibal added as he got up from the chair. "Goodbye, Will."

"Goodbye, Hannibal." 

At Hannibal's name, Winston looked up, ears pricked. He knew the name Hannibal, it usually meant yummy treats and sausages. But when his friend didn't appear, Winston gave an unhappy whine and put his head back down on his paws.

"I know, buddy." Will dropped a hand to gently ruffle Winston's floppy ears. "Me, too." 

\-----

A month later, a letter addressed to _Hannibal Lecter, c/o Dr. Alana Bloom, Baltimore State Hospital For The Criminally Insane_ arrived on Alana's desk. Immediately she recognized Will's handwriting on the envelope, and she tore it open hurriedly. 

_Dear Dr. Lecter_

_Dear Hannibal, that sounds better. Maybe retreating to the old doctor-patient relationship will make this easier. I sincerely doubt it, though._

_I've heard that you've had a little trouble with the burn on your back. I'm sorry. But I'm glad they were able to get you new skin. I don't know why it troubled me so much, because it didn't seem to bother you a damn bit. If I could've donated, I would have, but apparently, they were able to graft your own skin in place of the brand. For some reason, I was pleased to hear that. You're still wholly you._

_I hated that fucking thing so much. I saw it once, while you were taking a shower and trying to clean up after you brought me home. At first I thought I was dreaming, but then I realized what had been done to you. You didn't deserve that._

_You don't deserve this. A written goodbye after everything we've been through together seems a cheap way to end things. But it's the best I can do. You always saw the best parts in me, even when I didn't. You told me that once; we see the best in the people we care about, and through those eyes, we allow those people to become their best selves. Or something like that._

_I don't know if I'm my best self around you; I just know I've never known myself better, or deeper, than when we're together. I've known for a long time now that I'll never be the same without you; what I didn't expect was to hate the person I've become without you here. And so I'm leaving. I'm hoping to find myself again, the me that existed before I met you. I don't know if that person exists any longer, but I can't find out here._

_I'll always know where you are, Hannibal. And I will always remember what you have done for me. Some things I'll never be able to forget. Some things I'll never want to._

_But here is where it has to end. I once told Jack Crawford that a part of me would always want to run away with you. And that's the part of me that you will always have. You can always find me in the palace; I'll always wait for you there._

_I'm sorry._

_Will._

Alana felt a little sick after she'd read that letter; she'd promised Will that she would pass it on, not that she wouldn't read it, but Will had obviously believed she'd keep it private. There was no chance in hell that she was giving Hannibal this letter; no chance in hell that she was going to give him another chance to get into Will's head. 

She shredded the envelope the letter had come in, and thought about shredding the letter, too. But something made her keep it; she locked it in the bottom of her desk drawer, beneath the false bottom where the petty cash box lived. No one would ever know that letter existed, except for herself and Will Graham. One more secret; what was one more secret to keep?


End file.
